By Felicity Barringer
New York Times

Mayor Gavin Newsom is competitive about many things, garbage included. When the city found out a few weeks ago that it was keeping 70 percent of its disposable waste out of local landfills, he embraced the statistic the way other mayors embrace winning sports teams, improved test scores or declining crime rates. But the city wants more. So Mr. Newsom will soon be sending the city’s Board of Supervisors a proposal that would make the recycling of cans, bottles, paper, yard waste and food scraps mandatory instead of voluntary, on the pain of having garbage pickups suspended.

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By Robert Selna
San Francisco Chronicle

Expanding on a growing list of environmental initiatives in San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom called on leaders of Bay Area cities and counties Thursday to join him in urging automakers to produce plug-in hybrid cars. At a press conference at a southeast San Francisco auto repair shop that converts standard hybrids to plug-ins, Newsom said he would mail letters to Bay Area mayors and other leaders asking them to join him in an offer to buy the autos if the industry will make them.

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By David Smith
San Francisco Examiner

Green is the color of choice lately for Mayor Gavin Newsom, who unveiled Wednesday yet another effort to make The City environmentally friendly. Newsom proposed a new green building ordinance that would apply to new commercial and residential development as well as renovations to existing buildings. The green building proposal would impose stringent environmental standards on new construction and renovation to current buildings, according to Newsom. The standards would increase every year through 2012, when The City hopes to have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent of 1990 levels, according to a press release from his office. Read more »

By Lisa Leff
Time Magazine

It doesn't seem like an ideal place to promote solar energy, but foggy San Francisco has come up with an ambitious plan to encourage businesses and homeowners to tap the sun's power for their energy needs. The program announced Tuesday would offer companies and residents government-funded loans and rebates to offset the costs of installing solar panels, city officials said. "There is a perception, a myth in our city, that because of our climate we are not ideally situated for solar," Mayor Gavin Newsom said. "The reality is the climate in the Bay Area, the climate in San Francisco specifically, is ideally situated for solar." Read more »

By Lisa Leff
Associated Press

Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to ask voters next year to approve a "carbon tax" on businesses that he says would provide a financial incentive for conserving energy and motivating workers to use public transportation. The ballot measure would increase the city's 5 percent commercial utilities tax by an as-yet-undetermined amount to encourage energy-saving steps by hotels, offices and other nonresidential buildings, Newsom said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. To keep the higher rates from becoming an economic drag on the city, the initiative would carry a corresponding decrease in the 1.5 percent payroll tax on for-profit businesses in San Francisco, according to the mayor. Read more »

By Carolyn Marshall
New York Times

Claiming it now has the largest green fleet in the nation, the city of San Francisco this week completed a yearlong project to convert its entire array of diesel vehicles — from ambulances to street sweepers — to biodiesel, a clean-burning and renewable fuel that holds promise for helping to reduce greenhouse gases. Using virgin soy oil bought from producers in the Midwest, officials said that as of Friday, all of the city’s 1,500 diesel vehicles were powered with the environmentally friendlier fuel, intended to sharply reduce toxic diesel exhaust linked to a higher risk of asthma and premature death. “Just like secondhand smoke, diesel is one of the worst things we can breathe,” said the city’s clean vehicle manager, Vandana Bali of the Department of the Environment. Read more »

By Michael Cabanatuan
San Francisco Chronicle

The Bay Area might need smaller houses, higher gas taxes and tolls on busy roads and congested business districts if it is to meet the state's goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases, transportation and land use officials said Friday. The good news, however, is that a new poll shows that many Bay Area residents are ready to take those steps if it means a better future for the state and world. Setting goals is significant, leaders with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments told a crowd of 800 at a conference at the Oakland Convention Center. But making the lifestyle changes to meet them is far more challenging. Read more »

By Rachel Gordon
San Francisco Chronicle

It's not too often that the Bush administration points to the San Francisco Bay Area as a role model for the rest of the nation. But the region's proposed efforts to combat traffic congestion were held up by the president's transportation chief Tuesday as an example to emulate. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters was in San Francisco to tout the Bay Area's congestion-relief plan, which includes a proposal to charge motorists an extra toll as they come off the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. It also includes the use of high-tech parking meters and traffic signals to combat congestion on city streets. "We believe that the solution to today's traffic problems do not have to be just about building new roads and infrastructure. It's about using technology. San Francisco's leaders understand that," said Peters, who held a brief sidewalk news conference near San Francisco's Civic Center. Read more »

By Bernadette Del Chiaro
Clean Energy Advocate, Environment California

The California Independent System Operator (ISO) is forecasting a potential electricity shortage this afternoon of 290 megawatts (MW) due to heavy use of air conditioners throughout the state. This shortfall – the difference between the amount of peak electricity resources the state has on hand and the predicted demand - is roughly the equivalent to the amount of solar power California has installed throughout the state. This narrow but critical gap between supply and demand highlights how even a relative small amount of solar power can play a huge role in keeping the lights, and doing so without air pollution.

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By Jared Blumenfeld, Director, SF Department of the Environment
Susan Leal, General Manager, SF Public Utilities Commission
Originally Published in the San Francisco Chronicle

San Franciscans and other Bay Area residents enjoy some of the nation's highest quality drinking water, with pristine Sierra snowmelt from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir as our primary source. Every year, our water is tested more than 100,000 times to ensure that it meets or exceeds every standard for safe drinking water. And yet we still buy bottled water. Why? Maybe it's because we think bottled water is cleaner and somehow better, but that's not true. The federal standards for tap water are higher than those for bottled water. Read more »